This lesson will demystify the way a computer can talk to (and control) a digital camera. It will give you some basic guidelines
for handling your camera and creating impressive snapshots, as well as dealing with less-than-ideal lighting and subject orientation.
It will also introduce you to iPhoto, the iLife tool for moving those photographs from camera to Mac, and ultimately organizing
and sharing them.

You'll follow Jennifer, the studio owner, as she looks at her inventory. She might use a camera to help catalog and organize
her ceramics, so that staff can identify pieces or vendors can fill a certain order. But as she gets more creative, she sees
she can make beautiful photos of her ceramics that could inspire customers, creating not just “mug shots” but advertisements.

To see the process of getting shots into iPhoto, you'll also follow Charlie, the high school student, as he begins to prepare
photos for his school project.

Getting to Know Your Digital Camera

It can be daunting to buy a digital camera. The technology changes very quickly, as do the prices and features of the cameras.
There are professional-quality cameras with interchangeable lenses, hefty weight, and high-end controls. There are compact
consumer cameras with mostly automatic controls, a small zoom lens, and a flash. There are numerous features by which you
can compare cameras, but perhaps the most significant is that of image quality. To make image-quality comparisons, all digital
cameras are rated by a number of megapixels. Aside from how the camera feels in your hands, and, of course, its price, megapixels
are a key measurement for digital cameras.

Understanding Your Camera's Resolution

You can't talk about digital cameras without someone mentioning megapixels. Pixels are the smallest elements of a picture, like the dots on your TV screen if you look at it up close, or those of a
newspaper photograph. Images are made up of these tiny dots of color and shade; the more of them, the higher the resolution;
higher resolution means better-looking images. Of course, high-resolution images take up more space on your Mac's hard disk
(and your camera's memory card) than low-resolution images do, so for any given memory card or storage device, there's a trade-off
between more low-quality images and fewer high-quality images. A megapixel is a million pixels, and it's a pretty good place
to start when comparing cameras. All digital cameras use between, say, 1 and 6 megapixels to capture an image. And in many
ways, this defines how good the camera is.

But how many megapixels is enough? The answer depends on what you plan to do with your photographs. If you want to look at
them on a TV set, the resolution can be pretty low, because a television is a very low-resolution display (equivalent to about
1/3 megapixel). Using images on the Internet allows even smaller files—and thus no matter how good your camera, you'll end
up squeezing the image down to a radically lower pixel resolution (well below 1 megapixel). On the other hand, printing images demands the highest resolution—the larger the print, the higher the
resolution you want.

Prints this small make it hard to reveal the difference between resolutions. Still, the image on the left could be blown up
to a poster and look pretty good. The one on the right is already suffering even though it's small.

TIP

Images with lots of detail and color will look worse (revealing odd, digital-looking anomalies) with low-resolution cameras.
However, images with large areas of solid color, good contrast, and few details—as you often find with close-up shots—tend
to look okay with low-resolution cameras, at least better than wider shots.

So, if you have a low-megapixel camera, shoot more close-ups than scenic vistas. If you want more range, or plan to shoot
wide, you may need a higher-megapixel camera.

A 2-megapixel image will print with excellent quality at typical snapshot sizes (3.5 × 5 and 4 × 6 inches). If you want to
make enlargements at, say, 8 × 10, you may want to move up to 3 or 4 megapixels. And if you're a pro, or you plan to do really
high-quality photography, 5 or 6 megapixels will likely do the trick. If you never plan to do anything more than display images
on TV or on the Web, you can use the lowest-megapixel cameras available and save yourself some money.

NOTE

This, by the way, is why companies tend to demonstrate their DVDs, photos, and other compressed images using close-ups rather
than wide shots. If you want to see how good an image really is, check the stadium crowd shots or the leaves turning on a
million New England trees; these are far better indicators of potential problems than the model on the beach is. You really
want a combination of both mottled details and solid colors to reveal different kinds of potential problems.

TIP

Some companies offer combo camcorders and still cameras. In general, a camcorder image is of inferior image quality to a still
camera; you might be better served by using separate devices, each well tuned for their task. Also keep in mind that you can
grab a still frame from digital video any time you want (using iMovie, for instance) and don't have to have a special camcorder
or specific feature to provide that function. It may be low resolution, but it's good for small snapshots or Web images.